Aurel's laurels

I am sitting a few days later with my mother who is almost blind. Like me, she loves to write, but cannot scan what she is writing and hence comes up with strange omissions andnrepetitions. She spells a lot better than I do having had the priviledge of very good early education. She has me read what she has written. Finding it quite hard I have determined to write as she must, without ever looking at what I have written. We listenned together to a piece by Johan Strauss. She is talking and I keep losing my traain of thought. Ahyes!. The music was composed especially for the first ball in the newly decorated Buckingham Palace for Queen Victoria in 1838. Mummy, as she still likes to be called. Wrote that we were together enjoying this pen itself. The pen and the and the music.

For about twenty minutes I have been listenning to Bach cello music, most of which I know quite well. Cathy gave me the Yo Yo Ma double set when David was born. Very generous of her, because she knew how much I would love it, although I think she can’t stand it.. Continuing....Raf will join us for dinner.

Earlier my mother seemed to asking me if her moment of lucidity would go on. I told her that I had seen a moving film called “The Notebook” and then I described the film to her, never quite sure about how much she was understanding. She also asked me about death and said that she felt she would go on living for a long time. I said that I worked with people some of whome did not Care about dying quite soon. Some of their lives, I said, were not happy and they might even see death as arelief. Oh, my mother said, I’m not like that atall. I want to live. She asked me again about consciousness and I said that it was important to me and that I hoped to be very conscious as I died. That awareness was basically my religion, but many people die in pain and sadly modern drugs relieve us of many pains, but also take away our consciousness.When I visitted one of my acting teachers who was dying of aids, I talked to him, although I did not know if he could hear me or even process what I was saying if he could. Talking straight and seriously to my mother is a bit like that. Yet the other day she thanked me for talking about the things she liked to talk about.I have not asked her if she is frightennenned of going back to the hospice where she lives. I say hospice although English people rather ridiculously call it a home. She has said that she would like to stay here in the country,but has also reluctantly agreed that she could not live here by herself.Without any interuption, I have again forgotten what I waS ABOUT TO SAY, ALTHOUGH i KNOW THAT i HAD A FURTHER STATEMENT TO MAKE. Sticking to my first rule, I can see how my mother’sw riting meanders nowhere in particular, frequently turning back on it self. Viz I am writing that I am writing that I am writing that I am writing.